DEFINITION: Public Interest Technology (PIT) focuses on the development and realization of socially responsible solutions to the challenges in a technology-driven world.  It serves as a critical foundation for 21st century education and a driver for research that addresses complex problems and advances solutions with positive community impact.

From UMass Amherst PIT website: https://groups.cs.umass.edu/pit/public-interest-technology-faculty-fellowship-cy2023/

5 Reasons You Might Be a Public Interest Technologist. Ford Foundation

https://www.fordfoundation.org/news-and-stories/stories/posts/5-reasons-you-might-be-a-public-interest-technologist/

BOOK: Technology and the Public Interest. Haochen Sun. Cambridge University Press, 2022.

BOOK: A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide. Cyd Harrell. FiveSevenFive Books, 2020.

BOOK: A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide. Cyd Harrell. FiveSevenFive Books, 2020.

"civic tech is a loosely integrated movement that brings together the strengths of the private-sector tech world (its people, methods, or actual technology) to public entities with the aim of making government more responsive, efficient, modern, and more just" (p. 17).

"It also seeks to use digital tech to imagine interactions among fellow citizens' working together, and between those citizens and their governments" (pp.17-18).

BOOK: Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology. T.D. McGuiness & H. Schank. Princeton University Press, 2021.

Public interest technology offers a "framework to consider how to advance and protect human rights in a digital world. It argues for a systematic way of studying technology in the world -- including unforeseen and adverse consequences" (p. 142).

Public interest technology is "people-centered problem solving" (p. viii).

Co-Designing the Future with Public Interest Technology IEEE Technology and Society Magazine IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag. Technology and Society Magazine, IEEE. 40(3):10-15 Sep, 2021.

Special Issue: IEEE Technology and Society Magazine IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag. Technology and Society Magazine, IEEE. 40(3):10-15 Sep, 2021.

This special issue is dedicated to the theme of public interest technology (PIT) [1]. PIT acknowledges that technological potential can be harnessed to satisfy the needs of civil society. In other words, technology can be seen as a public good that can benefit all, through an open democratic system of governance, with open data initiatives, open technologies, and open systems/ecosystems designed for the collective good, as defined by respective communities that will be utilizing them. Just like in the established field of public interest law (PIL) [2], [3] and public interest journalism (PIJ) [4], we can consider potential fields around the idea of PIT [5], [6], such as public interest co-design (PITco), even public interest engagement (PITengage) or public interest consulting (PIC). For decades, public interest engineers (PIEs) have volunteered their time to collaborate in meaningful participative engagements. These engineers have self-organized some impressive collectives including Engineers Without Borders, ASCE Disaster Assistance Volunteer Program, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, Architecture for Humanity, Bridges to Prosperity, Bridging the Gap Africa, Engineers for a Sustainable World, GISCorps, Habitat for Humanity, National Engineering Projects in Community Service, just to name a few. These collectives and initiatives call attention to the primary role of a PIT practitioner. That is, the importance of PIT practitioners serving as transdisciplinary intermediaries between the community and the STEM disciplines and technical teams, emphasizing the importance of justice, equity, and inclusion in the design and deploy.

For clarity and consistency, the working definition of PIT used throughout this issue is the design and development of technologies in the civic interest for societal benefit [9], using inclusive problem-solving and focusing on well-being, human-centered design, and policy [10]

PIT programs are designed to train tomorrow’s leaders to imagine, design, create, and apply technology for the advancement of the social good

Paper: A Conceptual Model and Metaplatform for Public Interest Technology Design

Jeremy Pitt;Stephen Cranefield

IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society

Year: 2021 | Volume: 2, Issue: 2 | Journal Article | Publisher: IEEE

Mark’s Meadow Elementary School, also known as the Mark’s Meadow Demonstration Laboratory School, was a public elementary school located at 819 North Pleasant Street in Amherst, Massachusetts.^[1] It was one of the Amherst Regional Public Schools. The school served students in kindergarten through grade 6. It also functioned as a teacher preparation and educational research laboratory school for the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education with whom it shared a building owned by the University. Mark’s Meadow Elementary School opened in 1961 and was closed at the end of the 2009-2010 school year. After closing, the Mark’s Meadow section of the building was renovated by the University of Massachusetts Amherst to include offices, classrooms, and a coffee shop/lounge for the College of Education.

Photo of Mark's Meadow School on Wikimedia Commons

Photo of Mark's Meadow School undated. University Photograph Collection (RG 110-176). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

Photo of Interior of Mark's Meadow Auditorium 1982. University of Massachusetts Amherst Photo Negative Collection (RG 171). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

Between 1976 and the mid 1990s, children at Mark’s Meadow were taught in mixed-age classrooms.^[2] Mixed-age classrooms, also known as multigrade classrooms,^[3] include students from more than one elementary school grade in a single class, as in a first/second grade or a fifth/sixth grade. At Mark’s Meadow, teachers and families collaborated to determine the optimal age group placement for children.

In 1969, Mark’s Meadow received a three-year federal Model Kindergarten grant where it led the transition from publicly supported half-day to publicly supported full-day kindergarten in the state. In a full-day kindergarten, five-year-old children attend school for an entire school day for the same period of time as the other grades in the school. Lesley University and Tufts University also received model kindergarten grants that year.

Mark’s Meadow was the first public school in Amherst to implement after-school day care and breakfast programs. Beginning in the 1980s, the school placed students with special educational needs in regular education classrooms.

It was one of 20 schools in the country selected for the Kids Creating Original Opera program.

Mark's Meadow served as a demonstration laboratory school for preparing new elementary school teachers.^[4] The school employed the use of one-way observation mirrors with speaker/intercom audio system capabilities as part of its teacher preparation model. A corridor-long observation deck on the building’s second floor had large windows where education students and community members could watch classroom learning activities without being seen by the teachers and students. Microphones provided audio of classroom talk and interactions.

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